UC students may be asked to declare sexual orientation at registration

Students enrolling at a UC campus for fall 2013 may be asked to declare their sexual orientation on registration forms.

The question, which students will not be required to answer, is part of a statewide effort to gather more information on public college demographics. AB620 signed into law in October asks that UCs and other public colleges give students, staff and faculty the option to report sexual orientation and gender identity on any form that gathers demographic data.

UCs are just a few steps away from approving a question to be posed to students about sexual orientation and gender identity — but it will not be added to its admission forms, which gather demographic data.

Instead, the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) recommended in late January that the question be posed on students’ Statement of Intent to Register forms.

“BOARS didn’t think it was appropriate to include it on application forms, which parents are often involved with or read over,” said George Johnson, the committee’s vice chairman. “Our main concern was that prospective students, especially freshmen, may not be out or may not be out to their parents yet and we wanted to try for accurate data.”

While not all students will answer and some may answer untruthfully, any demographic data on students’ sexual orientation and gender identity will be helpful toward allocating resources toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students, Johnson said.

BOARS and the University Committee on Affirmative Action and Diversity jointly recommended that the question be added to registration forms for students enrolling in fall of 2013. They also recommended the issue be revisited in two years.

The Academic Senate signed off on the proposal, but the change still needs to be approved by the provost before it is officially adopted, said Academic Senate chairman Rob Anderson. The structure of the question has not yet been determined.

UC, California State University and community college systems already collect demographic data on ethnicity and socioeconomic status. CSU has no immediate plans to add a question asking about sexual orientation and gender identity, said CSU spokesman Mike Uhlenkamp.

Students’ responses to the question would be kept confidential under the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which keeps all student information confidential unless the student chooses to have it released, said HanMi Yoon-Wu, an admissions staff member in the office of the UC president.